Snack For Thought: Should Sleep Be Sacrificed For Homework?

Snack for Thought will be a series of semi-opinionative column that presents various views on a possibly controversial idea every two weeks – whether it be philosophical, seriously personal, or simply silly. The team encourages you to leave comments about what you think, so that we can choose our favourite opinion/question for each instalment and award prizes from the BRICs Café.

Phoebe Guan is currently a senior at AISG. She survives on an average of 3 hours of sleep per day to maintain her high grades. Does she think that sleep is vital? The answer is “no”. “The reason I sleep so little is because I have so much homework and assessments,” she laments. “It’s almost impossible for me to join after-school activities while still maintaining a healthy relationship with the people around me, AND finish all my tasks if I sleep early,” she says, but she laughs it off and says: “I’m used to it by now.” It is clear that as the older you get, the increasing responsibilities seem to make it harder to get enough sleep. The recommended sleeping time for 7-9 hours per day, yet it seems like students are struggling to meet half of the requirement.

As the AISG handbook states, doing around 2 hours of homework is the expectation for students to fulfil. However, this does not factor in other aspects of a student’s life. With Guangzhou traffic, a commute of long hours is totally normal. Also, most students participate in after school activities, which take another 1.5 hours off their day. Do the math yourself, and you will realise that students do not, in fact, have a lot of time to complete their daily tasks. For myself, a cycle occurs if I lose sleep for homework: I will stay up late to complete an assignment, pushing back my bedtime to 2:00AM, and the lack of sleep becomes my excuse for taking several naps throughout the day. When I wake up at 9:00PM from my ‘nap’, I am somewhat recharged, so I will have energy to stay up and work on my school work – delaying my bedtime once again.

There have been multiple studies with evidence that prove the importance of sleep, especially in adolescence. Losing sleep could significantly stunt your growth and cause your performance. Seniors especially have significantly increased their caffeine consumption nowadays with assessments piling up and exams right around the corner.

So there is the snack for thought. Do you think that sacrificing sleep for the sake of academics is worth it? Please leave comments below and let us know your opinions.